Books expose the rise of the emotionless zombies

Fears of the world being taken over by unfeeling zombies might not be totally far fetched. Our books indicate that English speakers are becoming less emotional.

Alberto Acerbi at the University of Bristol, UK, and colleagues calculated the frequency of words associated with six major emotions – anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and joy in the 5 million English-language books digitised by Google Books.

They found the use of emotionally charged words declined over the 20th century, but there was a relative upswing of fear-related words from 1980.

Several historical periods clearly popped out. During the second world war, the incidence of sad words peaked, whereas times of prosperity, such as the roaring twenties and the swinging sixties, saw a high prevalence of words related to joy.

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The data also show that within this general emotional decline, books written in American English were more emotional than those written in British English. This divergence began in the 1960s, a time when the UK was still recovering from the war while America was experiencing economic growth.

But do the trends really reflect the mood of the population or are they simply a proxy for the kind of books people like to read or trends in publishing? Because the data doesn’t account for how well the books sold, and because the changes in mood seen seem to correspond with political and economic events, Acerbi is confident that data “reflect a genuine cultural change”.